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Beginning Again

Cut those strings, he told himself. Release the ballast. Unfurl your sails. Anchors aweigh.

He wasn’t certain about that last expression. “Anchors aweigh.” Sounded like he should be readying a scale. He was pretty sure that’s how the song went, “Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh.” He owned a computer, and could easily look it all up, but he thought it a dated reference, anyhow.

Searching for something more appropriate for the digital age, he came up with “Just Do It.” Unfortunately, he couldn’t use that; the slash folks have trademarked it, and zealously guard their carefully cultivated expression.

Sliding back into the rocket age, he counted down, “Three, two, one…we have liftoff.” But those words failed to lift him, and he became a little depressed, because Major Tom entered his head. The Air Force song came up, “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,” but yonder construed a vague distance and direction.

“Where are we going?”

“Over yonder.”

“There?”

“Yes, yonder. There.”

Umm.

“Once more into the breach, lads,” he thought, but it would not do. Various people and rock performers sang about being back in the saddle again. Where was his creativity today?

What the hell. He needed an ending so he could start. “Lit ’em up,” he said, wincing. Time to reboot, he decided, pressing start, but it was such a dejecting way to begin. “On the road again,” he hummed.

Curse Willy Nelson.

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Today’s Theme Music

I awoke with Tom Jones singing “What’s New Pussycat?” in my head.

I don’t know how Tom got in there; I thought he was a bigger person that that. There are multiple unguarded entries into my head, of course. He may have slipped in through an ear opening, my nostrils, or my mouth. My mouth tasted like Tom Jones might have walked through there during the night, when I awoke.

Shrugging off the song, I instead began streaming the Foo Fighters’ “Best of You” from sometime in the first decade of this bold, new century. According to what my memory tells me about an interview I read with Dave Grohl back sometime in the shadow of the song’s release, it was written about breaking away from things that confine you, or something like that. I might be thinking of another song, or making this up completely.

Several lines in the song attract me. Like, “Were you born to resist, or be abused?” I’ve pondered the ways in which our systems abuse us, and how we take it with a tautological shrug, because that’s the way things are.

Later, he sings in a calmer moment, “I’ve got another confession my friend, I’m no fool.
I’m getting tired of starting again, somewhere new.”

That’s really I feel this lethargic summer Friday. I’m getting tired of starting again.

 

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The Talisman

He never spoke of it to anyone, and had only written of it once, in his private notebook that nobody ever read, but he had a talisman. It was always carried with him when he was leaving the house; he’d often also pick it up, holding and playing with it, keeping it close to him, even when in the house. He felt it gave him something. He loathed to describe it as confidence or power, but the talisman’s presence reassured him.

He was particular about keeping it in a safe place, where only he would go. Panic flooded him whenever he couldn’t find it. Searching, he would retrace steps, urging himself, “Think. When did you have it last?” Room from room, he’d prowl. Maybe he’d absently – foolishly – set it down in the bathroom. Or in the kitchen, or the living room, or the bedroom, the garage, the dining room – perhaps he’d dropped it. He had to find it.

When he did find it, he heaved a relieved sigh and held it against his chest, refraining with only a huge application of strength from whispering, “My precious.”

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A Drink of Fun

The young man walking toward him looked like a tall drink of fun. He wondered what the man was really like.

He’d once been a tall drink of fun, he rued. Well, not a tall drink, but a tumbler of fun. More like a shot, really.

He’d been a short shot of fun.

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Not His Problem

Icebergs breaking off and rising sea levels…they weren’t his problem. Seas rise. That was their problem. Their own fault, for buying land on the coast and building a house there. Their own fault, the fools.

Like building a place where you know there’s an earthquake, or volcano. Only a fool does that.

No, his problem was the dust. It was going to be another hot, dry, and dusty year with not enough water to bring grow the crops. The water levels were down everywhere.

That was his problem.

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A Sign

He takes the car down the road to the dilapidated cinder block car wash, where most of the features no longer work. Take the change, for example – please! – he laughs to himself, because his first quarter rolls right through the coin slot and machine, and out the other end, clinking on the wet and broken cement pad. He finds a penny when he picks up the quarter.

That car washed, he returns with the other vehicle. He takes it to a different stall, where – deja vu! – the same thing happens with the quarter, and he finds another penny.

Two cars, two stalls, two quarters, two pennies. He cups the pennies in his hand and shakes them.

It must be a sign.

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The Reason

You hear about it all the time, but it never happens to you. You read about another one just yesterday. Still, it’s the police. There must be a reason they’re shooting and killing all those people. They wouldn’t do it, unless they had a reason.

Those victims must have been asking for it, or the police would have never killed them. After all, they’re the police. They protect and serve.

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